HFCS is chemically similar to table sugar and is found in a variety of foods.

While controversy exists over the parallel between the meteoric rise of HFCS and the obesity epidemic, most experts don’t think there is any link between the two.

“Total added sugar intake has barely budged in the last 4 decades or so, but folks fail to realize that while HFCS availability has increased, it has concurrently replaced sucrose (table sugar) intake and availability in the commercial food supply,” says Men’s Health nutrition advisor, Alan Aragon, M.S. “So, when you swap a compound with physiologically equivalent effects with another in roughly equal amounts, you get zip.”

What is true is, as a whole, Americans are eating too much sugar. The American Heart Association recommends most men ingest no more than 150 calories per day of added sugar (that’s about 9 teaspoons).

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